Question Trying to understand why my 96GBs of RAM can't handles 20-30GB files

[DocPit]

I process large Photoshop files: 20-30GB. I have a Dell Precision 7820 Tower Workstation that I purchased because I believed it would be able to handle those super large files. Not so. It will sometimes take PS 5 seconds just to hide or reveal a layer. Brush strokes lag. Warp transformation are so slow they are unworkable. This is the hardware: Dell Precision 7820 Tower Workstation with a Xeon Gold processor, 96GB of the fastest RAM [at that time]; an Nvidia Quadro RTX5000, 16GB video card, a Class 50 1TB SSD for the operating system and a second internal 960GB Optane Drive for use as a scratch disk. I do my work on D:\ (an internal 960GB Optane Drive). I also designate that drive as my first scratch disk. Currently, it has 830GB of free space. I designate my next fastest drive, my internal system drive (C:\) as my second scratch disk because, even with the OS, it still has 701GB of free space. My third scratch disk is an external SSD with 837GB of free space. It’s a fast SSD, but not as fast as an internal SSD. I allow PS to use 85% of available RAM, which comes out to just over 65GB. In Photoshop, the "Efficiency" indicator is 100% if PS is operating entirely in RAM; less if it needs to go to scratch disks. I get sluggish performance even when my Efficiency is 100%. I would certainly appreciate it if someone could explain why this machine can't handle these files. Thanks.

 

[kanewolf]

I process large Photoshop files: 20-30GB. I have a Dell Precision 7820 Tower Workstation that I purchased because I believed it would be able to handle those super large files. Not so. It will sometimes take PS 5 seconds just to hide or reveal a layer. Brush strokes lag. Warp transformation are so slow they are unworkable. This is the hardware: Dell Precision 7820 Tower Workstation with a Xeon Gold processor, 96GB of the fastest RAM [at that time]; an Nvidia Quadro RTX5000, 16GB video card, a Class 50 1TB SSD for the operating system and a second internal 960GB Optane Drive for use as a scratch disk. I do my work on D:\ (an internal 960GB Optane Drive). I also designate that drive as my first scratch disk. Currently, it has 830GB of free space. I designate my next fastest drive, my internal system drive (C:\) as my second scratch disk because, even with the OS, it still has 701GB of free space. My third scratch disk is an external SSD with 837GB of free space. It’s a fast SSD, but not as fast as an internal SSD. I allow PS to use 85% of available RAM, which comes out to just over 65GB. In Photoshop, the "Efficiency" indicator is 100% if PS is operating entirely in RAM; less if it needs to go to scratch disks. I get sluggish performance even when my Efficiency is 100%. I would certainly appreciate it if someone could explain why this machine can't handle these files. Thanks.

Which Xeon Gold CPU? Some have high clock speeds and lower core count others have high core count but low clock speeds.
How is this 96GB achieved? Three 32GB DIMMs? or Six 16GB DIMMs?

 

[DocPit]

Which Xeon Gold CPU? Some have high clock speeds and lower core count others have high core count but low clock speeds.
How is this 96GB achieved? Three 32GB DIMMs? or Six 16GB DIMMs?

The machine was purchased in Jan. 2020. This is the information in the order details: Intel Xeon Gold 5222 3.9GHz Turbo, 4C, 10.4GT/s 2UPI, 16.5MB Cache, HT (105W) DDR4-2933 (Code GAU8SRX, SKU [338-BSNO][412-AAKK][575-BBPB]. Sorry I don't have the technical expertise to provide a better answer to your question. Thanks for your response.

 

[Misgar]

Are you using GPU acceleration?

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html#features-using-gpu

What version of Photoshop? CC 2023, CS 6, something else.

RAW files, PSD, TIFF?

Run the Puget System's Photoshop benchmark and I'll compare with my rigs (if I manage to install the plugin}.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/PugetBench-for-Photoshop-1132/

 

[kanewolf]

The machine was purchased in Jan. 2020. This is the information in the order details: Intel Xeon Gold 5222 3.9GHz Turbo, 4C, 10.4GT/s 2UPI, 16.5MB Cache, HT (105W) DDR4-2933 (Code GAU8SRX, SKU [338-BSNO][412-AAKK][575-BBPB]. Sorry I don't have the technical expertise to provide a better answer to your question. Thanks for your response.

That CPU is similar in cores and clock speed to a standard desktop CPU.
The order details should tell you the memory configuration. 16GB sticks or 32GB sticks.

 

[Misgar]

At 20 to 30GB, your Photoshop file are indeed very big. In comparison, I'm only working on 50MB Canon CR2 RAW files, a tiny fraction of the size. May I enquire what resolution you are processing, or how many layers you're using?

The Puget Systems web site recommends 32GB RAM for 'Photoshop documents between 500MB and 1GB' and 64GB+ RAM for 'even larger documents'.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...adobe-photoshop/hardware-recommendations/#ram

I don't know if direct extrapolation applies, but it's possible a 30GB file might require 30 x 32GB = 960GB, i.e. nearly 1TB RAM.

How fast are your Optane drives.
How fast are your SSDs.
Are they SATA or M.2 NVMe.

You could probably benefit from an 8-drive RAID0 NVMe Gen4 or Gen5 array for speed.

Puget suggest you get diminishing returns in Photoshop for CPUs with more than 8-cores, but your Xeon has only 4-cores. At the moment, Puget recommend the Intel i9-13900K for a typical Photoshop workstation.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...adobe-photoshop/hardware-recommendations/#cpu

Since your files are more than an order of magnitude larger, I think you might benefit from a Threadripper Pro 5995WX which supports up to 2TB RAM or a Xeon W-3300 with up to 4TB RAM.

You might also consider two or four RTX 6000 GPUs, if Photoshop can be configured to work with multiple graphics cards.

You will need very deep pockets indeed to build a system around either of these processors, but your current system is obviously overwhelmed by the sheer size of your files.

 

[Xii-Nyth]

At 20 to 30GB, your Photoshop file are indeed very big. In comparison, I'm only working on 50MB Canon CR2 RAW files, a tiny fraction of the size. May I enquire what resolution you are processing, or how many layers you're using?

The Puget Systems web site recommends 32GB RAM for 'Photoshop documents between 500MB and 1GB' and 64GB+ RAM for 'even larger documents'.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...adobe-photoshop/hardware-recommendations/#ram

I don't know if direct extrapolation applies, but it's possible a 30GB file might require 30 x 32GB = 960GB, i.e. nearly 1TB RAM.

How fast are your Optane drives.
How fast are your SSDs.
Are they SATA or M.2 NVMe.

You could probably benefit from an 8-drive RAID0 NVMe Gen4 or Gen5 array for speed.

Puget suggest you get diminishing returns in Photoshop for CPUs with more than 8-cores, but your Xeon has only 4-cores. At the moment, Puget recommend the Intel i9-13900K for a typical Photoshop workstation.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...adobe-photoshop/hardware-recommendations/#cpu

Since your files are more than an order of magnitude larger, I think you might benefit from a Threadripper Pro 5995WX which supports up to 2TB RAM or a Xeon W-3300 with up to 4TB RAM.

You might also consider two or four RTX 6000 GPUs, if Photoshop can be configured to work with multiple graphics cards.

You will need very deep pockets indeed to build a system around either of these processors, but your current system is obviously overwhelmed by the sheer size of your files.

photoshop barely utilized more than a single 1050 last I checked

 

[Misgar]

@xil-Nyth. I think you're 100% correct. Photoshop performance is not really improved with faster video cards.

I do more work with video and rendering tasks where fast GPUs significantly reduce processing times. I think I was confusing graphics acceleration benefits in Premiere Pro, etc. and extrapolating them over to Photoshop. Mea culpa.

I still think the OP could benefit from a significant increase in the amount of RAM, plus at least 8 CPU cores and even faster storage for scratch files plus work in progress. The current system is grinding to a halt, but I assume it was much faster three years ago. Perhaps file sizes have got much larger over the intervening years?

Editing 20 to 30GB Photoshop files is way outside my league and I take my hat off to anyone dealing with such mammoth tasks.